An ultrasonic image processing apparatus irradiates ultrasonic waves from the surface of an object, for example, the human body, toward a target region within the body, receives reflected ultrasonic waves reflected by the target region, and obtains tomograms of various tissues and structures, for example, ultrasonic images of soft tissues or blood stream, using the received ultrasonic information.
The ultrasonic image processing apparatus is small in size and low in cost, displays an image in real time and provides high safety owing to no X-ray exposure, or the like, as compared with other imaging devices, such as a digital radiography (DR) system or a computed tomography (CT) scanner. Therefore, the ultrasonic image processing apparatus is widely used for heart diagnosis, abdominal diagnosis, urological diagnosis and obstetric and gynecological diagnosis.
Particularly, when ultrasonic waves generated in transducers disposed at one end of an ultrasonic probe of an ultrasonic image processing apparatus are reflected by a specific interior material of an object, the ultrasonic image processing apparatus performs beam forming by receiving the reflected ultrasonic waves, converting the received ultrasonic waves into electrical signals, and compensating for a time difference between the electrical signals, and then produces an ultrasonic image through predetermined image processing.